


hurt my knuckles punching the machines

by Emeraldwoman



Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-04-29 13:16:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 17,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14473533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/pseuds/Emeraldwoman
Summary: After the events of Infinity War, Jess and Matt make terrible decisions in New York City, like unto two wrecked trains crashing into each other.Massive spoilers for Infinity War. Canon-consistent (ish) post-The Defenders and post-Jessica Jones season 2. The major warning is for canon-compliant death and extrapolated consequences.





	1. Chapter 1

Jessica Jones is asleep when half the world’s population dissolves into dust and memories, because of course she is.

She wakes up pretty fast, what with all the screaming, and then she spends the next three days in constant motion. She pulls people out of car wrecks, puts out literal fires, stops a couple riots, and prevents a pedophile from walking away with a six-year-old who’d lost her family. She gives her to another family, because they look okay, and they say yes, and she has to keep moving. She doesn’t give a shit about looters, but she stops killers, and she stops people stealing from each other. She flies everywhere, because it’s the fastest way to get around, and it doesn’t matter if anyone sees her.

Nothing matters, but she can’t stop. 

Oscar and Vido made it. Hogarth’s gone. Cheng’s gone. Malcolm’s doing do-gooder soup kitchen shit out of their offices.

Trish is gone.

Jessica doesn’t know a lot of people.

She flies into Harlem a couple times during that three days. Luke and Claire are working their asses off; talking to people and fixing things and being generally inspiring. If Jess had to bandage ten thousand booboos or organise communal meals or perimeter guards or whatever she would have to shoot herself.

Not that she hasn’t thought about it, but not yet.

She’s good at punching people, so she does that. Luke tells her some people to punch; generally assholes who have banded together to be assholes in company and have heard that Harlem’s still standing. On the third night he goes out with her. A good old-fashioned team-up. Just like old times.

She throws assholes around and Luke tells them that if they want to come into Harlem, they can. They just have to follow the rules. 

“You’ll have to surrender your weapons,” he says.

“We’ve got medical care and power and food,” he says.

“Plenty of room,” he says, and Jessica laughs.

She actually can’t stop laughing. Luke gives her a harrassed look, and then a concerned one, and then hauls her out of there. He parks her ass in an alley until the laughter stops shuddering out of her. If he tries to pat her shoulder, she’s going to hit him in the eye.

“When was the last time you slept, Jess?” he says.

“Like you give a shit.”

Luke rolls his eyes and waits. He’s got a thousand things to do and she’s wasting his time. She shouldn’t be fucking him around.

“Not since.”

“Jesus.”

“Hey,” she says. “What about Rand?”

Luke rubs his knuckles. “He was in Europe, with Colleen.”

“Where?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. France or Spain or something. Business trip. Go home, Jess. Get some sleep.” 

She walks. Why not. It’s a nice night, all things considered. There are little patches of light; generators, or candles. Their building’s still there. She bangs on Oscar’s door until he opens it.

“Oh, thank Jesus, you’re okay,” he says, and hugs her. It would be nice, if she could feel it. “Tell me next time you’re gonna be gone that long, okay?”

“You gotta get out of the city,” she says. “You and Vido.”

“What?”

“Shit’s going to get real bad.” Luke and Claire have been talking. She hasn’t been listening, exactly, but there’s some stuff you can’t help hearing. Words like “famine” and “epidemics”. Half of 1.6 million people is still a fuckton of people to be living on a small island, especially when they’re angry and scared. And mourning.

“Jess… the roads are blocked.”

“I’ll fly you out.”

He stares at her. “You mean it.”

There’s this thing throbbing above her left eye. “Yeah.”

“That’s…” He exhales. His breath is warm on her cheek. “Well. Vido will be excited.”

Half of all the people Vido has ever met are now dead or disappeared or taken up by the Rapture or whatever the fuck happened. She doesn’t think a flight out of Manhattan is going to do a lot for him, but who knows. Kids are weird.

“You’re not coming with us,” Oscar says, folding his arms. It’s not a question. He knows her.

Famine. Epidemic. A lot of people who’ll need punching. “No.”

“Your sister would be proud,” he says.

Jessica jerks, backs away a couple steps. “You’d better pack. We’ll go tomorrow. Early.”

He drops his arms, half-turns in invitation. “You don’t want to come inside?”

Jessica doesn’t have the slightest fucking clue what she wants. But that’s not new. She goes in.

In the morning, she wakes with Oscar’s arm around her waist and Vido’s knee in her guts. For a little kid, he takes up a lot of room. Breakfast is beans and rice, warmed over a spirit stove Oscar took from a camping store on the first day. He’s got a lot of gear. She’s not worried about him. He’s a survivor.

She puts them down upstate. There are farms and that kind of shit. The country roads are clearer. If they steal a car and travel back routes they should be able to get around okay. 

Vido isn’t talking. Some trauma thing. He hugs her before she goes.

Jessica’s hungry when she gets back to the city, so she loots a convenience store that hasn’t been too picked over yet, and breaks into a rooftop bar to steal some bottles.

Then she goes home, eats half a Twinkie, and drinks until she blacks out.

When she wakes up, Matt fucking Murdock is asleep on her couch.


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes him up by dropping and lifting the couch.

It’s funny, the way he spins and crouches, arms in some kind of fancy pose, open eyes staring just past her.

“Good morning, Murdock,” she says.

“Jessica Jones.” He straightens. “What the hell?”

Jessica swipes the nearly empty bottle off her desk and chugs it. She thinks about throwing the bottle at his head, but he’d just pull some of his ninja crap.

“Hi,” she says. “Aren’t you dead?” How long has Luke known about this? There’s something hot and strong bubbling at the back of her throat. It tastes a lot like fury.

He rubs his temples. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I don’t care.”

“I was recovering,” he says, exactly as if she hadn’t said anything. “My uh. Someone found me and took me to a safe place.”

“Well, that sounds very specific,” Jessica says. “Get out of my office.”

She’s on her toes, watching his hands. Waiting for him to hit back, verbally or otherwise. That fury is dancing along her veins, making everything hot and good and real.

He sits back down on the couch and covers his eyes with one hand. “You’re still here,” he says. For a moment she thinks the asshole is laughing at her, and then she catches the hitch in his breathing.

“Oh, fuck me,” she says, and goes into the bathroom to ball up some toilet paper. She’s running out. She should be hoarding it. She shoves the makeshift pad into his hands and sits beside him.

Murdock wipes his eyes and blows his nose. It’s noisy. Her head hurts.

“So I guess you know Luke’s okay,” she says. “Claire too. Rand and Colleen, no one knows, so flip a coin.” Is that a, like, insensitive thing to say to a blind man? Wait, he could feel which side was facing up. “I don’t know about Knight either.”

“Misty’s all right. I ran into her yesterday. She’s holding a squad from the 32nd Precinct together.”

That’s in Harlem. Luke probably knew about Knight _and_ Murdock, and didn’t tell her. 

He’s been busy. And she didn’t ask.

“Why are you here?”

“I was out on patrol,” he says. “I, uh, don’t have an apartment any more. I thought this might be a safe place to stay. You were asleep when I came in.” 

“Patrol,” Jessica says.

“What do you call it?”

“Nothing? _Patrol_. Christ.”

Murdock is silent, which Jess has always considered suspicious behaviour in a lawyer. 

Jess is silent too. That’s because her biggest question goes “why don’t you stay with your fancy lawyer or journalist friends?” and she’s pretty sure she knows the answer. She prefers to think positive. He could just have slept at her place because he was exhausted and couldn’t do his parkour leaping thing for another block. He looks like crap.

“You look like crap,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says dryly. “I’ve been ill.”

He’s pastier than usual. When she looks for it, she sees the IV mark on the back of his hand. 

“Did you walk out of intensive care?” she demands.

“Half the staff dissolved,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “I was fine. There didn’t seem much point in sticking around.”

He doesn’t look fine. No one looks fine.

“Use my bed,” she says. “This couch is shitty. I’m going to check in with Harlem.”

“Thanks,” he says, and pushes himself up again, hobbling towards her bedroom. He’s moving weird, favouring one hip. 

A building fell on him, so she’s not really surprised, but she's got this faint hinge of like… apprehension. Like if the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is limping, they’re all completely screwed. 

If that’s her personal alarm bell, it is seriously miswired. She locks the door for the first time since everything went to shit, and flies out the window.

When she walks into the public library Luke and his people are working out of, he ushers her over to the kid’s section and lowers his voice. “I have to tell you something,” he begins.

“Murdock’s alive.”

He straightens. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“He’s sleeping in my bed.”

“Huh,” Luke says. Just that, one syllable, and he’s not looking at her any particular way.

“Yeah,” Jessica says, and drags out the word. “ _Yeah._ You know how it is, hobo vigilante shows up at my door, and my panties drop right off.” _Underwear_ , she hears her mother say. _We wear underwear_. “Next thing you know we’re going down to pound town.”

Luke looks away. “I didn’t-”

"It was amazing. Totally blew my mind."

“Hi, Jessica,” Claire says, from over her shoulder. 

It’s really hard to be a dick around Claire Temple. She’s got this weird mix of no-nonsense, not-taking-any-of-your-shit and like, goodness. Like she’s just a naturally good person and knows how to make the right decisions all the time and never hesitates. Half of Jessica wants to beg Claire to show her how it’s done, what secret code she has to break or magical fucking journey she has to go on. The other half wants to scuttle into the nearest hole, like any filthy, squirming thing exposed to light.

“He came in while I was sleeping and passed out on my couch. When I woke up I made him take the bed,” Jessica says.

“That was nice of you,” Claire says. “I told him he could stay here but you know what he’s like.” She drops her voice an octave. “My city needs me.” Oh, yeah. Claire’s pissed.

“You guys didn’t know either, huh?”

“Nope. He walked in yesterday.” Luke’s pretty much growling. Not telling your one-time save-the-city punch-up buddy that you’re back from the dead is probably a major violation of some dude code.

“Well, okay,” Jess says. This shouldn’t be as satisfying as it is, but it’s nice that she isn’t the only one Murdock kept his creepy little secrets from. “You need me to kick the crap out of anyone?”

Luke and Claire exchange glances.

“How do you feel about heavy lifting?” Claire asks.

Heavy lifting means clearing the crashed cars out of intersections and streets and taking anything from them that might be useful later. Luke’s been doing a bit of that, and teams of his people have been doing a lot more of it, but Luke’s busy, and Jess is basically a team by herself.

She shoves and lifts and tugs until it starts getting dark. She doesn’t think about it, about all the empty car seats and the people thrown out when the drivers disappeared, about the things left behind in trunks and back seats and glove compartments. She lets her body keep going, and kind of puts her brain somewhere else, somewhere quiet.

She flies home instead of walking. Nobody points or shouts anymore; she’s just another thing not worth worrying about. She sees three jumpers on the way. She might have tried to save them, a week ago. She won’t stop anyone from making that choice now.

Murdock is on the roof when she lands. He’s not wearing his red supersuit, but he’s tied something black over his eyes. 

“No one cares about masks now,” she says.

“Shh.” He’s doing that head-tilt thing, following his ears where someone else might be squinting closer.

“Don’t fucking shush me.”

“There,” he says, apparently satisfied.

“Well, don’t keep a lady waiting, Murdock.”

He smiles faintly. “Couple of Irish families have joined forces. They’re planning to set up in the Kitchen.”

“When you say families, you mean the Irish Mob, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why the hell do they want to move here?”

“They’ve got vision,” he says. Jessica isn’t sure if Murdock can say anything without it sounding just a little sarcastic. “This is where the Irish gangs got started.”

“Reclaiming the promised land,” Jessica says. “Cute.”

“I thought I’d roll out the welcome wagon,” Daredevil says, voice low and dangerous. “Care to join me?”

Jessica’s been lifting cars all day. She’s tired and dirty and wants a shower (which she can’t have) or a quick sponge bath with cold bottled water (which she can).

“Sure,” she says. “What the hell.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jessica got over the desire to be neat and graceful and pretty a long time ago. If she’d got through her surly teenage drama years without the one-two punch of the accident and the powers, she might have grown up into someone who wanted that, but hey, she didn’t. She ended up with Dorothy, who had impossible standards, and Trish, who nearly killed herself more than once trying to meet them. It kind of put her off that kind of thing.

Dorothy might have made it through Dust Day. Jessica doesn’t plan to check.

The point is, she’s not, like, _balletic_.

Murdock is. He doesn’t limp when he’s fighting. He spins and dances, limbs moving with precision. He makes beautiful lines through the air, and then his fist or foot or elbow or knee makes contact, and his dance partners crumple, all their grace gone.

When Jessica kicks an Irish gangster, she takes a short run-up and punts him across the room. When Murdock kicks an Irish gangster, he feints high, ducks low, and does this spin thing on the ball of his foot, his other leg outstretched. Then he’s standing up, and the man with the pipe is lying on his back, wheezing.

“Stay out of Hell’s Kitchen,” the Devil says.

“Fuck you,” the gangster says. 

Jessica rolls her eyes. “Original.”

“Fuck you too, bitch!”

Something purple flickers at the edge of her vision. Murdock grabs her arm. There’s blood on her knuckles. Jessica doesn’t remember the first punch.

She shakes him off and stands up from where she’s crouching over the gangster. He’s moaning, blood dribbling from his mouth. His jaw’s the wrong shape.

Shit. Shit.

“I think my associate’s made herself clear,” the Devil says.

He walks out. Jessica follows.

They get about halfway down the block before Murdock’s limp returns. Which one’s the fake?

“I don’t like that word either,” he says. “But-”

“He pissed me off.”

“Okay.”

Jessica is bracing herself for a lecture. Murdock just keeps walking. Maybe he reads something off her silence, because after a moment he turns back to her. “Just don’t kill anyone.”

“Haven’t so far.” She winces. “I mean- since.”

“How many before?” He could be asking about the number of pet rocks in her collection.

“Two. Self-defence.” 

“Who was the other one? Kilgrave I know about.”

Rage runs hot through her body. “No,” she says. Her voice doesn’t sound right. “You don’t know anything.”

He’s poised. Listening to something. Her heartbeat? “Sorry,” he says.

Jessica is ready to go. Fuck him, and fuck that asshole with the big pipe and the bigger mouth, and just fuck everything. She can leave, if she wants. She can find Oscar and Vido and learn how to live off the land and shit like that.

She doesn’t have to stay.

Knowing that makes it easier. Makes her breathing steady and her muscles release. She’s choosing to stay. It’s up to her.

“Are you on my couch again?”

“If that’s all right.”

She grunts. “Have you got anything? Food or blankets?”

“No. Nothing. Sorry.”

“I’ll meet you back there,” she says, and leaps into the sky.

He says something else but she’s not listening. It’s harder to fly over Manhattan in the dark, harder to spot landmarks and good landing spots. She’s still not that great at landing; she needs enough space that she won’t run into anything. The Upper East Side isn’t the best place; all the roofs have massive air-conditioning units or patio furniture or fucking _beehives_. She lands on a tennis court on 75th and walks the rest of the way. God, this sucks. She can’t believe she misses the subway.

Malcolm’s still awake. There’s like two hundred people in the building that used to house Hogarth and Associates, and he probably knows all their names, birthdays, and favourite pets when they were kids. Jessica lets him hug her and make her a cup of tea both of them know she won’t drink. 

“How’re you doing?” he asks.

Malcolm has always been the master of the dumb question.

“I need some stuff,” she says. “Someone’s staying with me.”

“Oscar? Vido?”

“No. Someone else.” 

Malcolm’s eyes go big. “Someone you know? Jess, that’s great.”

Jessica grunts. She’s too tired to get into it, but- “Oscar and Vido left. I told them to. Things are going to get bad, Malcolm.”

“Yeah.”

“This is for real. This isn’t a bad time for a week or two and then the army and FEMA and Captain America turn up. We’re really screwed.”

“I know.” His eyes are steady. Malcolm knows what it’s like, when you’ve run out of yourself and the whole world is burning. This time it’s happening outside of his own head and body, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less aware of just how fucking awful the universe can be.

It’s useless. She says it anyway: “You should leave too.”

“No.”

Jessica sighs. “Fine. Then can I break into your apartment and steal your shit?”

He laughs.

“What?”

Malcolm wipes his eyes. “I assumed you already had,” he says, practically choking on his own amusement. “But instead, here you come, _asking_ me, practically _polite_ -”

“Asshole.”

“Jessica Jones, observing the forms of propriety-”

Jessica kicks his chair leg. Her stupid mouth is smiling.

“Wow,” Malcolm says, and the laughter fades from his eyes. “I guess it’s really the end of the world.”

Jessica’s stomach rolls over. She stands. “Yes or no?”

“Yes, of course. I’m here for-” he looks around. “A long time, I think. Can you bring me a few things? When you can. I know you’re busy.”

“Write a list.” 

She pokes around the offices while he does that. He hasn’t organised teams or taken control the same way Luke and Claire did; people drop in and ask for help, or offer it, and he puts them in touch with each other. If there isn’t enough help to go round, he goes out and begs for it. 

There’s a lot of bedding and canned food and bottled water in what used to be Jeri’s office. Jessica hopes that he’s hoarding some of it for himself, but knows he’s not. She’ll have to rescue his ass, probably.

The bedding’s really nice. Crisp white sheet, monogrammed, high thread count-

“Came from the Savoy,” Malcolm says, from the door.

“You’re robbing luxury hotels?”

“Not me. But a lot of people. They were donated.”

“I should do that. Why didn’t I do that?”

“Not much left. Once someone gets a good idea, you know. But take those.”

Jessica lets go. “Nah,” she says. “They won’t smell right.”

Malcolm’s nose wrinkles. He’s like an adorable little bunny rabbit. “Gross.” He hesitates. “Jess, your friend. They can stay at my place. It’s okay.”

Jessica hadn’t even thought of that. Matt Murdock down the hall is even more unsettling than Matt Murdock on her couch, somehow. They’d be _neighbours._

“No, it's fine. I’ll keep it nice for you,” she says. “For when you can come back.”

“Right,” he says. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” She takes the list from his hand. “So. Bye.”

He shakes his head mournfully. “So _polite_.”

Jessica flips him the bird and takes off. Then she climbs back in the window. “Malcolm. Did you ever want to fuck me?”

He blinks. “No.”

“Good,” she says.

His face is going dark red under his usual brown, his eyebrows wriggling around like very confused caterpillars. “Jess- hang on, wait. Did you mean- Jess, we should talk about this! Come back!”

She's grinning as she flies home. That’ll teach him to call her polite.


	4. Chapter 4

Murdock’s a pretty good roommate.

This is annoying. Jessica has so many huge, crappy things she can’t complain about that she’d really like some smaller, irritating things to snap at him for. But he never leaves his stuff out, and he doesn’t say a thing about her housekeeping (or lack of it), and he even folds up the bedding she got from Malcolm’s place and leaves it in a neat pile on the couch, every single day.

Maybe the blind thing makes him neater. She’s not really sure how his perceptions work; she’s never seen him bump into anything or move with hesitation. One day she comes home and he’s reading a book with his fingers; she assumes it’s braille until he puts it down to greet her and she catches a glimpse of the print.

“Seriously?” she asks.

“It’s laser printed,” he says. “Stands just a little above the paper. Claire gave it to me from the library.”

“Anyone ever tell you that’s creepy?”

His mouth quirks. “Anyone ever tell you you’re rude?”

“All the fucking time,” Jessica says cheerfully. This is the closest thing to a normal conversation she’s had in three weeks. She picks up the bag she carried home and gives it a shake. The bottles clunk together. “Ask me what’s in here.”

“I’m assuming something your liver won’t like.”

“My liver is fine, thanks so much for your concern.” She unloads them onto her desk. “This is Glenmorangie Pride. And this is Balvenie 30 year old single malt, and _this_ is-”

“Whisky,” Murdock says.

“Some of the best whisky in the world.” She catches his expression. “What? I’m broke, not tasteless.”

“I’ve smelled the amount of tabasco you put on your rice.”

“One, creepy again. Two, that rice is inedible without hot sauce. I know Claire’s stockpiling spices, so why do the Harlem kitchens keep turning out nutritional slop?”

“Because they’re feeding thousands of people.”

“Yeah, okay, use logic on me.”

“You’re in a good mood.”

She is. She’s spent the day doing good work and now she gets to enjoy her well-earned reward. “So here’s a thing I learned. People don’t want to climb stairs.”

“Okay.”

“Even in the apocalypse. Not that I blame them, because climbing stairs sucks. But what that means is that there are a fuckton of skyscrapers in this city, and without elevators, no one’s really living above the tenth floor. Fifteenth, twentieth if they’re hungry or scared. But no higher, because people want to be close enough to get out. And there are also a ton of high-rise apartments owned by rich pricks-”

“-that no one was living in,” Murdock says. “Even before the change.”

“Right! Mostly empty ten months out of twelve, Claire told me. And they all have _stuff_ in them. Medical supplies, stored food-”

“Whisky.” 

“Whisky,” Jessica agrees, and pulls the top off a bottle of Lagavulin; not super pricy, but definitely better than the bodega shit she’s used to. 

Murdock twitches. Jessica isn’t surprised; the smoky, peaty smell is strong enough in her own nostrils. “And here’s the thing, Murdock: I can fly. I went through ten apartments today, and I didn’t have to take a single flight of stairs. I ferried a bunch of important stuff to Claire and Malcolm and a couple of the other do-gooder centres, like a good little pack mule, and _now_ I’m going to get drunk off the finest whisky ever made.”

She takes a swig. It curls down her throat, smoke and rich earth. She breathes in, open-mouthed, and the oxygen sets her taste-buds firing, the aftertaste rich and burning. “Oh god,” she says. “I’d forgotten.” She sits beside him on the couch.

Murdock shifts away from her a little. “You’ve had this before?”

“I’ve been to a lot of B-list parties,” she says, absent-mindedly. “Sometimes they have the good stuff. But once, on my birthday, Trish got me a bottle of Macallan Reflexion. It was before she got sober. We drank it together and-”

She remembers.

It hits her in the guts, like a girder or her mother’s fist. She can’t breathe, she can’t think, and then there’s a bright pain in her hand and her jeans are wet and everything stinks of whisky and blood.

“Easy,” Murdock is saying. He’s crouching beside her, not quite touching. “Jessica, are you with me?”

“She’s dead,” Jessica says. Her voice doesn’t sound right.

“I know, Jessica. I’m sorry. Can you open your hand for me?”

“What?” She looks down. Her fist is clenched tight around the broken neck of the bottle. The second she looks, the pain stabs through her. “Oh, _motherfucker_.”

“Open your hand,” Murdock repeats, and she forces her fingers open. Oh, shit, she’s ground the glass right in there. Her palm looks like a crazed serial killer’s been hacking at it. There’s a regular spurting of blood at the base of her thumb. Sliced artery. That thick white thing might be a tendon, or maybe bone.

She’s survived worse. Much worse. 

“Okay,” Murdock says. He’s not looking at the wound, but past it. His head’s tilted, like maybe he’s _listening_ to the injury. “I take it you heal pretty well?”

“Yeah,” she says. Her lungs are squeezed too tight. “I mean… I won’t survive a bullet to the head, but minor stuff heals fast.”

Murdock’s mouth twists. “This might not be minor. I can pick it out and bandage you up, but maybe you should get to Harlem-”

“I don’t want to fly,” Jessica says. Her tongue is thick in her mouth. Her vision is clear around Murdock’s face, and fuzzing at the edges. “Shit. Murdock, I’m going into shock.”

He’s very still for a moment. “Okay. No flight then,” he says matter-of-factly, and gets to his feet. “Have you got a first aid kit?”

She has _Malcolm’s_ first aid kit. She brought it over out of the vague expectation that Murdock might need it.

She sits there, while the whisky evaporates from her jeans and Murdock picks the glass out, shard by shard. They don’t have the materials for stitches, and she isn’t sure she could take anything else sharp going into her hand right now, so he uses a buttload of butterfly bandages instead. 

He pauses twice - once to put a blanket around her shaking shoulders, and once when she demands a glass of the Glenmorangie.

“Feeling better, then,” he says, and smiles when she snarls. There’s a tinge of relief to it, she thinks, and when he’s done he pours her a slug while she leans back, breathing through the pain. She doesn’t have the energy to bite at him when he gets himself one too. She guesses he’s earned that, anyway.

“At least it’s sterile,” she says, and he barks out a laugh.

“You could probably carry out an operation on this couch,” he says, and she realises that she’s spilled booze and blood all over his bed. 

“Are you heading out? On _patrol_?” Maybe she can clean it up while he’s out.

There’s a brief pause, then: “Not tonight,” he says, just a touch too casually.

“I don’t need a nurse,” Jessica says, and takes a sip. Her mouth lights up. “Oh man.”

He frowns, and then takes a sip himself.

“Wow,” Jessica says. “Is that your O face?”

He coughs. “This is… impressive.”

She clinks her glass against his - awkward, because she’s using her left hand and it doesn’t grip quite right - and settles in to drink the pain away.

Murdock’s too smart to try and match her drink for drink, but between them they sample all of the bottles, and by the time she’s got a nice buzz on, his face is twitching. The second time she goes to the bathroom (they have a bucket. It’s disgusting, but hey) she comes back to find him leaning back into the couch, limbs gone loose and open. She’s never seen him relaxed before. The notch of pale flesh between his collarbones looks vulnerable.

“Go to bed,” she says. “I’ll take the couch.”

He frowns. “It’s fine. You’re injured.”

“You’re not sleeping in my blood, Murdock.” She eyes the stubborn set of his mouth and sighs. “Fine. You can have the right half of the bed.”

“That’s not-”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she says. 

For once, he isn’t. His breathing evens out after ten minutes or so and he’s out. Jessica lies awake in the dark for a while, and thinks about the hollow of Matt's throat.

What a pain in the ass this is going to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet your ass I drank whisky while I wrote this.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jessica gets some.

On the third day after Jessica cuts her hand, Claire catches her. Before Jessica can muster more than a scowl she’s sitting in a chair while Claire unwraps and changes the bandage. The face Claire makes when she sees the mass of butterfly stickers shows exactly what she thinks of Jessica’s little adventure and Murdock’s bandaging expertise. But she concedes that at her current healing rates, Jessica will be fine in a few days.

“How are things going with Matt?” she asks.

“Murdock’s okay.” Jessica makes her tone as flat as she can. Her face is completely indifferent. Her body language is perfect - no closing up or stiffening.

Claire smirks at her.

“Oh my god,” Jessica says. “Are you a witch?”

“I wish,” Claire says, and looks around at Harlem Hospital Center. It was the first place she and Luke went to protect, when they realised the sheer scale of what had happened. It’s still intact, and they still have supplies. At least for now. “Things would be a lot easier if I had magic powers. We’ve had two dozen dysentery cases this morning.” She refocuses. “Look. Matt’s kind of… a lot. I’m not saying don’t go there. I’m just saying proceed with caution.”

“I’m not _proceeding_ ,” Jessica says, and gets the fuck out of there before Claire can be sharp and kind at her some more. This is weird. This is like a girl thing. Girls warning girls about boys. 

What’s also weird is that Jessica wants to fuck someone, and hasn’t told them so yet.

Normally she’d have asked him if he wanted to bang it out about five minutes after she realised. Sex is hers. Asking is hers. Those are things she can do - you can say no, and that’s fine, but you can’t stop her from asking when she means it and wants it, for real, herself.

She’s pretty sure that Murdock’s freaky-deaky senses can tell that she wants him. He doesn’t say anything about it, and she can’t tell whether he’s trying to be polite by ignoring whatever her body is telling him, or trying to be polite by not directly telling her that he’s not interested, and hoping she will - politely - stop herself from asking.

Jessica doesn’t really do polite.

But, well, this roommate thing is working. The rest of the building is empty now, as people migrate to Harlem, where things are safer and they’ve set up every portapotty Luke could drag home from a construction site, or to the fancy places uptown, where they can put their toilet buckets in bathrooms with clawfoot tubs and double sinks with gold faucets, none of which they can actually use. Luke says he’s working on consistent power and water - especially power, with winter coming, but Jessica isn’t holding her breath.

The building is empty except for them, which is okay, because Jessica doesn’t want to be around a lot of people.

She doesn’t want to be alone, either.

The fifth or sixth time Jessica accidentally calls him Matt, she just resigns herself to the fact that she’s going to keep doing that, and doesn’t try to catch it.

“You could move into Malcolm’s place,” she says, as they pass each other in the hall, about two weeks after she cut her hand. He’s going out, black scarf tied around his face. She’s coming in from a long day of helping Luke clear the Henry Hudson Bridge. Cars make a really satisfying splash when you drop them over the edge, and that’s about the only part of that job she likes. “He said you could, if you wanted.”

Matt’s chin tilts. “Do you want me to move out?”

Oh, fuck. He’s a human lie detector. “It’s okay if you stick around,” Jessica says. 

His chin tilts back. “Okay with me if it’s okay with you.”

“Okay,” Jessica says. The word is starting to lose its meaning. “That’s, uh-”

“Fine?” He’s smiling.

“Asshole,” Jessica says. “Enjoy _patrol_.”

“Want to come?”

“Fuck no.” She brandishes her booty. “I found wet wipes. I’m going to have an apocalypse bath.”

“Have fun,” he says. There’s a… thing. Something in his voice. It’s a little bit deeper or darker, just for a second, and he turns just a little bit too quickly and-

He was imagining her naked. He totally was. Naked and wiping off her sweaty, grimy body with a half-used pack of wet wipes she stole from the glovebox of an El Camino.

That shouldn’t be hot.

She peels her clothes off on her way to the bathroom, which is actually dumb. She could use the wet wipes anywhere, but somehow her head has decided that the bathroom is where washing happens, even when the water won’t run.

Her body has decided that imagining Matt watch her wipe down is a really good idea. She feels that juicy clench in her cunt, the first time things have really kicked off since- No. She’s not going to think about that. She’s not going to think at all - that isn't what sex is for, even with herself.

She leans against the wall and props her leg on the rim of the tub, fingers sliding either side of her clit without any preliminaries. There’s a time for teasing and there’s a time for getting what she wants. What she wants is Matt kneeling in front of her, Matt’s head between her thighs, Matt’s tongue pounding against her clit. She wants his hands on her ass, holding her in place, like she couldn’t break free whenever she wanted. She wants her hands in his hair, not holding, just resting, guiding, as he breathes wet against her and licks and licks and-

She comes hard, gasping, and knocks the back of her skull against the wall.

Christ.

Now she really needs that bath.

She wakes when Matt walks into the couch, which is at first annoying and then alarming. He doesn’t bump into things. He swears under his breath and land heavily on the cracked frame.

It’s probably his turn to be injured. “You okay?” she calls, but she’s already rolling out of bed and yanking her jeans on by feel.

“Fine,” he says, but no one who sounds like that is fine.

“Come on, tell me where it hurts,” Jessica says, trying to force something like humour into her voice. It comes out cracked. She fumbles her way towards where she thinks his voice came from, and nearly lands on top of him. “Shit, sorry-”

Matt kisses her.

Part of Jessica is wondering if he used his powers to find her mouth that way, so precisely, in the dark. Most of her is thinking, _Fuck, yes, I knew it._. A very small, very embarrassing part is thinking nothing more complex than _Wheeeeee!_.

Matt Murdock is a damn good kisser. He’s hungry for her, open and wet and wanting, but not gross or pushy. He slides his tongue between her lips rather than shoving, and she gives as good as she gets. When she gets the chance, she bites his lower lip, and has the satisfaction of hearing him groan, low and heartfelt.

His lips taste like salt. No. Like tears.

“Uh,” she says, and pulls back. He lets her go. “Should we. You know. Talk about this?”

“If you want,” Matt says, tone as enthusiastic as if she’d offered him a kick in the balls.

Jessica thinks about whether she wants to talk. Then she decides to stop thinking, and starts taking off her pants.


	6. Chapter 6

Matt slides his hands up her ribs, under her tank top. He’s still wearing his gloves, and the thin leather catches on her skin, drags her up onto him so that he can kiss her again, hands braced on her back. Jessica drops her chin and bites just under his jaw, at the soft spot where bone becomes throat.

He shudders underneath her.

She bites again, harder. “Mask off,” she says.

“You can’t see me anyway,” he says, but one of his hands leaves her back to pull off his scarf.

“You’re such a shit,” Jessica says, and gets her hands into all that thick, soft hair. She tugs his head to the side, and licks a wet line down his throat, tasting sweat and salt. “You argue just to argue, don’t you? Fucking lawyers.”

“Fucking PIs,” Matt says, with the hint of a gasp. He slides his thigh up between hers, and Jessica rocks down, pressing against him. New York nights are so dark now. She can’t see a thing, but her eyes are open. Her top comes over her head, and then she gets his shirt off, but they’re still wearing too many clothes.

She rolls to her feet.

“Jess?”

“Get naked,” she growls, and strips jeans and underwear in one motion, tossing them in the direction of her desk. Something falls over somewhere and she doesn’t give a shit, because Matt Murdock proves he can follow orders.

He presses against her, fever-hot skin and strong hands, and she grabs the back of his head, pulling his mouth down to hers. He’s not polite, thank god. He guides her backwards through the dark, hands on her ass, mouth moving along her collarbone, until she feels her hips bump against the edge of her desk.

He lifts her off her feet and onto the edge, legs dangling.

“Wow, okay,” Jessica says and hooks her ankles behind his hips, pulling him closer. He hunches over her, braced on his hands, breathing ragged. His cock lies in the crease of her thigh, pulsing heat against her skin. “Come on, hero.”

“Not yet,” says the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. He pulls back. Her calves hang over his shoulders. His thumbs press into her hips.

“Oh shit,” Jessica says, and drop back onto her elbows just as his tongue sweeps up her cunt. Oh god. This isn’t fucking fair. He can hear her heartbeat, smell the changes in her sweat, feel every moment of shiver and tension.

But he’s not telling her what to do. He’s not telling her to like it. Her whole body is telling him what she wants, and he’s _listening_.

He keeps licking, broad, flat sweeps up the side of her clit, pressing hard at the end of every stroke. Jessica thumps flat onto the desk, biting at the heel of her hand when he pushes two fingers into her. She clenches around them and hears his muffled groan.

Orgasm rolls through her, in dark, heavy waves, and while she’s under, she stops thinking.

Matt slides his fingers out and stands upright. She can _hear_ him smirking, that smug asshole. 

Jessica swings her legs off the desk - they will hold her, because she orders them to, goddamn it - and grabs him by the waist. “Lie down,” she says, and her voice has gone flat and low.

She climbs on top of him, adjusts, slides down until he’s deep inside her. His breath hiccups. Yeah, who’s smiling now?

“Jones,” he says, and his hands cup her breasts. Tender, too tender, but when she starts to ride him he groans, and his grip tightens and yes, that’s it, there. She flings her head back and gives herself over to it, the wet slap of flesh on flesh, the pressure and the motion. Her body is smoothing out her brain the way it does in a fight, and she has to remember that Matt is human, that he’s breakable. She comes back to herself just enough, feels her hair sway between her shoulder blades, feels his cock thrust up as his hips jump to her rhythm.

“Jessica,” he says, and goes absolutely still, stops breathing, totally silent as he comes. 

Well, fuck. Now what do they do?

Matt starts breathing again, a steady in and out. Jessica rises to her knees, and is wondering if she can manage the climb over the torso with any kind of grace - why is it always more awkward getting off a guy than on him? - when Matt sits up and cups her face in his hands.

“Hey,” he says.

“Uh. Hi.”

He kisses her, soft and a little sloppy. Jessica can taste herself on him. 

“Let’s not make this a thing,” she says.

“Right,” he says. “We should probably get some sleep. Do you need a guide back to the bed?”

“I’ll make it, Murdock.” She scoots backwards and off the desk, and makes it all the way into the bedroom before she trips on anything. There’s a muffled snort from the couch. “Oh, shut up,” she says, and gropes her way back under the covers.

Her sleep is deep and dreamless, and when she wakes up, Matt is gone.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s laundry day in Harlem. People are streaming up and down the blocks, ferrying armloads of clothing and sheets to the playground that’s been turned into a giant old-school laundry. There are fires under huge tubs of water, and people dumping clothes in and swirling them around with long sticks. There are teams of teenagers busy stretching lines across the narrower streets, laughing and yelling at each other in at least four languages.

Jess lands. “Looking for Luke?” a middle-aged woman in a bright yellow dashiki asks.

“Uh, yeah.”

The woman jerks her turbaned head towards the library and keeps walking.

Luke is surrounded by a group staring a map spread out on one of those big library tables. Claire, of course, plus three guys and four women, one of whom is Misty Knight. She nods at Jessica, and returns her attention to Luke.

“-need to figure out home teams,” Luke is saying. “We need to get there and set up before the cold really sets in.”

“You think this is cold?” Misty snorts. “How’d anyone ever believe you from Chicago?”

Luke grins at her, and spots Jessica. “Hey, Jess. How fast can you fly?”

Jessica bites back the instinctive urge to be a smartass. Everyone in this room is trying to keep the rest of them alive. “Not sure. Not as fast as a plane.”

“Can you test it?” Misty asks. “If we give you some mile markers, and time you-”

“What’s this about?”

Luke folds his arms. “Some working parties are moving upstate. We’re going to get some of the hydro plants running, get power back. We need a way to get messages around without having to send people out, and I thought maybe you'd be willing.”

Oh great. She’s the Pony Express. Flying between Albany and New York so whatever electricians and engineers Luke’s scraped up can talk nerdy to each other sounds as appealing as getting repeatedly kicked in the crotch.

“Yeah, sure,” she says. “I’ll go where you send me.”

Luke tilts his head and Misty purses her lips, but Claire just smiles at her. It’s like getting approval from the sun. If Jessica’s been interpreting this right, Matt had a chance at being with Claire, and he screwed it up.

Matt Murdock is an idiot.

“We’ve got to figure out running water, too,” says one of the men. Shaved head, upright stance - Jess is guessing military or former military. He doesn’t look that big standing next to Luke, but probably most people would see him as imposing. “The chemical toilets are filling up, and we can’t stop people dumping shit into the Hudson.”

From the grimaces, it’s clear he means that literally. 

“We can’t stop them drinking from it, either,” Claire says, and everyone turns to her. She’s got huge smudges under her eyes, and Jessica takes a second to register, from the bloodshot eyes and slumping shoulders, that everyone in this room probably got less sleep than she did. That’s not normal. 

“Telling people to boil river water - any water - only works if they can make heat,” Claire continues. “Right now, we’re getting a lot of dysentery cases, which are bad enough. But all it takes is one person eating the wrong shit-swimming fish at the wrong time, and we have Patient Zero for a cholera outbreak. At that point, we’ll be longing for the dysentery days.”

“Which first, Claire?” Luke asks, and it’s a real question. Jessica thought Luke and Claire were working together, but with him making the final calls. But yeah, this makes sense - he’s the natural leader, the one who gathers people together, but she’s the one who makes the right decisions. “Power or water?”

“Power,” Claire says, after a long pause. “Now. I gotta get back to the hospital.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jessica says. She’d been going to ask Luke if he needed any heavy lifting done, but fuck it, she’s agreed to her good deed for the day.

They’re half a block away from the library when Claire says, with amusement lilting in her voice, “So, boy trouble?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Jessica says. “I’m a grown-ass woman.”

Claire pulls back a little. “Sorry.” She looks like she means it, like she’s sorry she didn’t work out Jessica didn’t want to be teased. Like Jessica’s feelings matter.

“Sorry,” Jessica mumbles. “I’m just an asshole today.”

“Today?” Claire asks, mild as milk, and for a second she sounds _so_ much like Trish, just the right mix of affection and frustration. 

Jessica stops walking. Purple flickers in the edges.

“- wrong? Jess?”

“I fucked Matt,” she says, because that’s- that’s so much easier. Whatever had Matt coming home stumbling and crying, it was probably something like that. Who could just tell someone about that? Who could flay themselves open, ask for salt on the raw flesh, say _this is where the wounds are_? 

Lots of people, in theory. Malcolm could. Trish had, in rehab, so many times.

But not her. Not Matt. No wonder he’d kissed her. No wonder she’d fucked him.

“I thought you two would get there eventually,” Claire says. She’s being very matter-of-fact and sensible. Nurse voice.

“We’re not _dating_ ,” Jessica says, genuinely horrified. “It was- you know, whatever. It was fine.”

Her body reminds her, with vicious and expertly timed sense memory, that it was much better than fine.

“Sure,” Claire says, and the tone of her voice indicates that if Jessica doesn’t want to do girl-talk, then okay. This is as far as Claire is willing to try. “Okay, well. I gotta get back to work.”

Jessica is still trying to work out if she owes Claire more than this, or how she can say it if she does, which is why she follows her into the medical centre.

Which is the only reason she’s there to see the guy with the gun.

He’s sitting in the back row of the waiting area, alone. He’s scrawny, in ragged clothes, with a filthy bandage wrapped around his upper left arm. Probably white, probably young, though it’s hard to be sure, between the dirt and the ski mask he pulls over his face when Claire walks in. 

It’s that motion that catches Jessica’s attention, the jerk of the mask coming down, and then he’s getting to his feet and his hand is diving into his pocket, and he’s starting to say something.

By then Jessica’s moving too. She shoves Claire forward and down and pivots towards the guy, one step, two, and he’s raising the gun and his eyes widen with panic because who is this woman, how is she so fast, why is everything going wrong-

Jessica doesn’t go for the gun. She breaks his forearm the way anyone could break a pencil, cracking it between her hands.

He screams like a cornered rat and collapses in front of her. The bone is sticking out of his arm, piercing right through his worn grey hoodie. Jessica takes the pistol from his limp fingers and ejects the clip.

She turns to Claire. “Are you okay?”

Claire is fetched up against the reception desk, one hand on her shoulder, her eyes wide. Jessica must have shoved her a little harder than she thought. “You didn’t-” she says, and swallows hard. “Did you need to do _that_?”

That is the crying, bleeding kid on the floor. Two of the other staff are moving towards him, saying soothing things, because medics are self-sacrificing, heroic _morons_ , and Claire is looking at her like she’s the monster, _she’s_ the bad guy, and Jessica takes four steps backwards, and then she's through the doors. Because she was barely even in the building. That’s how long it takes her to fuck up. 

As soon as she’s outside, she takes off into the crisp autumn air. Up there, no one can look at her in any kind of way. Not so she can see.


	8. Chapter 8

Jessica flies around the city, hopping from building to building, grabbing things and stuffing them into a duffel bag. She has the hazy idea that she could go find Oscar and Vido, that she’ll need supplies for the trip, but after a while she drops the bag off at Malcolm’s window and just keeps moving.

At ground level, people are everywhere. Jessica never really thought about how many people were locked up in office buildings during the day. Now there are no bullshit office jobs to go to, and people have stopped hiding in their homes. They’re talking to each other. Building communities. Talking to the people in Harlem and Chinatown and that group led by the Central Park Conservancy Program, figuring out what to do, how to stay alive.

She hasn’t seen any jumpers for over a week.

She sleeps in Hogarth’s penthouse. Looters picked it over, but Jessica knows Hogarth would have had a safe room, and after some tactical kicking at the bedroom walls, she finds it. Food, water, batteries, radio, queen-sized air mattress with 2000 thread count sheets. Siege luxury, ready for the day people finally decided to eat the rich.

Hogarth was a total bitch, but she had absolutely no illusions about who she was. Jessica can respect that. Herself, she keeps trying to pretend she’s not a monster. It’s pretty fucking exhausting.

There’s no whiskey in the hidden liquor cabinet, but there’s plenty of wine. Jessica drinks a couple of bottles, grimacing at the tannin aftertaste, and wanders around the place. It’d be a great view, if the lights were on.

Why aren’t the lights on?

Only half the population died in the initial snap. Lots of accidental deaths in the immediate aftermath, lots of suicides. Not that many murders. The people in charge, the ones who organise the people who organise stuff, where are they? Did they all die, or did they evacuate? Did the mayor and the governor and everyone just say, oh, time for Plan B? Get me my helicopter; let’s leave the peasants to themselves.

Well, fuck them. This isn’t their city. It never was.

She’s staying. Claire’s sad face isn’t going to make her go.

Jessica falls asleep fully dressed on the wide couch, and wakes up when she hears the tentative scrape of a shoe on floor. 

“Matt?” she says, before she can stop herself.

Of course it’s not. Because one, he wouldn’t make a noise, and two, he wouldn’t be following her around to see if she was okay, and three, he wouldn’t need the yellow circle of light that sweeps across the room, and freezes at the sound of her voice.

Jessica gets a glimpse of two figures, big eyes in pale faces, and then the one holding the flashlight drops it and they run.

Jessica goes after them. Catching scared kids, in the dark, while she’s still half-drunk is actually a lot easier than it should be. 

There’s a boy about Vido’s age, and a girl who’s maybe fifteen or sixteen. She’s the one who fights, clawing at Jessica’s arm.

“I won’t hurt you,” she says. “Jesus! Don’t fucking bite, god!” She wraps her arm around the girl and pulls her close.

The boy tears free and takes up some kind of wobbly taekwando stance.

“Look,” Jessica says, “do you want something to eat or not?” The flashlight on the floor makes it hard to see his expression, but after a second the boy drops his hands and nods.

“Run, Hunter!” the girl says. She drops all her weight down and slams her heels into Jessica’s shin. Honestly, if Jessica wasn’t who she was, it wouldn’t be a bad move.

Jessica tosses her onto the couch.

There’s dead silence for a moment.

“Are you a superhero?” asks the boy.

“No. I’m Jessica Jones. I’ve had a shitty day.”

“I’m Hunter,” the boy says, and comes a little closer. He’s wearing an honest-to-god Ralph Lauren hoodie. Jessica can see the stupid horse embroidered on it.

She bends and picks up the flashlight, props it on the coffee table so that she can see them better. The girl’s highlights are growing out. She’s wearing something blue and furry over jeans that probably cost more than what Jessica used to earn in a week, but her fingers worry at the ragged coat cuffs. Neither of them smells that good, but the girl’s sprayed on some kind of perfume.

“I’m Skylar,” the girl says, after a pause just long enough to indicate that she’s offering her name as a favour, and not because Jessica wants it.

She must have driven her teachers crazy.

Two kids on their own, haunting the upper levels of a fancy apartment building. Jessica thinks she can probably fill in the backstory. She pushes a granola bar towards each of them.

“Have you two been down to street level yet?” she says. 

“Skylar said people might get us,” Hunter says. He tears into the bar. 

Skylar opens her wrapper more carefully, her eyes on Jessica. “There are gangs down there.”

“Those are communities,” Jessica says, more sharply than she meant to. “There are people looking out for kids like you. People going building to building, looking for unaccompanied minors.”

“We hid,” Hunter says. “Skylar said they might be bad.”

“They took lots of our stuff,” Skylar says accusingly. “They said, is there anyone here and then they loaded up their bags. You took Ms Hogarth’s stuff. You drank her wine. This isn’t yours. You shouldn’t take things that aren’t yours.” She waves the bar at Jessica, and then takes another bite. 

“The principle of private ownership has less ethical standing in crisis,” says a new voice. Skylar and Hunter stiffen.

Jessica sighs. “Come in, Murdock.”

He slips through the door, pulling the scarf off as he enters the circle of light. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Matthew.”

“You’re blind!” Hunter says.

“Hunter! That’s a bad thing to say!”

Matt smiles at Skylar’s objection. “Why? It’s true.”

Skylar frowns mightily and takes another bite. Now that Jessica’s watching, she’s not sure all of this is snotty rich-kid behaviour. Skylar watches her, but she never quite makes eye contact.

“Stay here tonight,” Matt tells them. “We’ll take you to Harlem in the morning.”

“We’re not allowed to go to Harlem,” Skylar says. 

Jessica kind of wants to slap her parents, except, you know, they’re obviously dead.

“How about Central Park?” she says. “People are growing things there. Plenty of food.” And latrine trenches, and strict water rations, and those tents are going to get dicey in winter. But it’s okay for now. As far as she knows, the people in charge are good people.

“Central Park is okay,” Skylar allows. 

“Then it’s settled,” Matt says. “Gimme a granola bar, Jones.”

“Get your own, Murdock.”

Hunter giggles, and Matt keeps talking, telling a story about how one time he was walking in Central Park and slipped in dog shit. It’s clearly something he’s inventing on the spot, but Hunter is delighted, and tells some stories about poop adventures of his own, and eventually relaxes enough to tell them their story which, yeah, is pretty much what Jessica expected. Dad was in the city and never came home. Mom was in her home office, and then she wasn’t. Hunter was at home with a cold.

And Skylar had walked home from school and up 48 flights of stairs to look after her brother. 

“That’s a long walk,” Matt says, after a pause.

“Mom said, if there was trouble, I should go home or listen to a responsible grown-up,” Skylar says matter-of-factly. “I told Ms Kennelly that I wanted to go home, and she said, good idea, Skylar. So I did. And the elevator wasn’t working, so I used the stairs.” She looks around. “I took breaks,” she adds. “Every eighth floor.”

“That’s pretty smart,” Jessica says. 

Skylar nods. “I want to sleep now,” she announces. “Hunter, you sleep too.”

Hunter protests until Matt says that he and Jessica need their sleep too. Jessica can see where this is going, but she can’t figure out a way to stop it. These kids need something, and if that’s her and Matt playing happy families for a night, she can deal.

So Skylar tucks blankets around Hunter and herself, and Matt gets more blankets from the bedroom and sets up the air mattress.

“I can sleep in the chair,” he says, voice low so not to wake up the kids.

There’s just enough uncertainty in his voice that Jess can get over herself. “It’s a big mattress,” she says, and gets under the covers.

In the middle of the night he puts his arm around her waist in his sleep. Jessica enjoys that for a carefully rationed sixty seconds, and then gently moves it away.

They wake up near sunrise, curled back to back. Someone is shouting.

It’s Skylar. “Fire!” she’s screaming, pointing out the window, at the ugly orange flickers in the grey pre-dawn light. “Fire! Fire! Danger!”

Matt’s head is cocked. “Six blocks east,” he says. “It’s spreading. Jess-”

“Let’s go,” she says, and tosses an armchair through the window.


	9. Chapter 9

“Stay here,” Matt tells the kids.

“Hang on, Murdock, we can drop them off at Central-”

“If it spreads this far, we’ll come back for them.” His voice is urgent. “Jessica, I can hear people.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Jessica says, and picks him up in her arms, like he’s a damsel in distress she’s rescuing from a tower. This is so fucking awkward, but it’s that or dangle him from the armpits. “Stay here, guys.”

“We’ll be back,” Murdock promises, and then she’s through the gap and he’s yelling directions in her ear.

It’s just as well that he followed her to Hogarth’s place - though she still wants to know _why_ \- because the people trapped in that building have no chance without both of them. The smoke is so thick Jess can barely see her own hand in front of her face, but Matt always knows where to go. There are places where the fastest way to get to someone is through a wall, and that’s her job.

She jumps, and flies, and kicks a locked door open to drag a woman from under her bed, and flies again. Matt is clinging to her shoulders by this point, which is even weirder than the damsel-carry, because he’s basically giving her a sweaty hug from behind.

The person she’s carrying babbles something in Spanish, too fast for her to follow, and Matt says something back. It sounds like he’s trying to be reassuring, but his voice is cracking, smoke-hoarse.

Jess hands over the person in her arms to the crowd and takes a quick look around. There are a lot of people. Some of them are working to hold the others back, under the shouted instructions of a woman wearing a firefighting jacket. There’s no water, that’s the thing. There’s just no water.

The woman in the jacket looks up and runs towards them. “Firebreaks,” she shouts.

“What?”

“Firebreaks! You’re strong. Can you make them? That building’s going to go. We’re going to lose the whole block with this wind, and it’s going to be like ‘35 if we don’t stop the spread. We need dynamite or _something_ to take down buildings in the firezone, we need people on the roof of every building outside the perimeter with dirt and blankets to smother sparks, we need-”

Jessica’s thighs are burning with the strain, her shoulders tense in a way she didn’t know they could get. She’s been burned and bruised and cut, but she hasn’t felt aches from straining her muscles for a long, long time. She’s trying to understand what the woman is saying, but she doesn’t have room for it in her head.

Someone else in a firefighting uniform turns up, and the woman turns to him instead.

“The roof,” Matt shouts, and Jess takes off. She has to close her eyes and hold her breath through the worst of the acrid, gritty smoke. Matt’s coughing in her ear, and she worries he might lose his grip. She presses his clasped hands into her collarbone.

There are people on the roof. She has to take Matt’s word for it, because she can’t see or hear them. Fire is so loud. She never knew how loud.

Something gives under her feet where she lands. 

“Where are they?” she yells.

Matt can’t tell her where the people are; he’s coughing non-stop.

“I’m here,” Jessica shouts into the smoke, and feels heat sear her throat on the inhale.

Matt’s grip loosens. He’s deadweight on her back. Jessica crosses her arms over his to hold him there, and shoots straight up, until she feels cool air on her face.

Below them, the building collapses. Sparks are already travelling on the wind, flames leaping onto the building’s north-eastern neighbours. Anyone left in that conflagration is dead. She hopes they were dead before the flames.

She tries to get a look at Matt over her shoulder. Is he breathing?

He gasps, a long, harsh inhale, and shudders back to life. 

“You crazy fucking asshole,” she croaks, breathless with relief as much as lack of oxygen. “If you’d died again, I was going to kick your ass.”

Matt laughs, a sound that turns into painful hacking. Jess gets them both onto the ground and he stumbles free, unsteady, but standing. The firefighters are turning out in force, and the Central Park people are there, and teams from Harlem with medical supplies.

“You’re with me, Murdock,” Claire says, appearing out of nowhere like a freaking magician.

“I’m fine,” he lies. 

“That’s bullshit, and I don’t care. Out here, you’re the closest thing I’ve got to an x-ray machine or a heart monitor. Move your ass.”

Matt grins in Jessica’s direction as Claire starts to drag him away, and Jessica sees the moment he remembers the people on the roof.

“No,” she says, before he has to ask. “I wasn’t fast enough.”

Matt turns away, but not before she catches a glimpse of his face. Fuck ups and failure; that’s the world of Jessica Jones. She takes a couple of steps backward, directly into Luke’s chest.

“You okay, Jess? Nikita wants us to start making firebreaks.”

“I gotta- There’s some kids in an apartment nearby. I got to get them someplace safe. I’ll come back.” She hates that it sounds like an excuse, like a promise she won’t keep. Even though she is coming back. There's no way she could leave this, and live with herself.

Luke nods. He’s got no reason to trust her, not after what she did, but it sometimes it seems like he wants to.

Jessica flies back to Hogarth’s building.

“You look bad,” Skylar says.

“I know.” Jessica looks around; expensive art, expensive furniture, expensive candles, and all of it essentially trash. “We’re going to go back to your apartment and pack up anything you want to keep, guys. Clothes and blankets. Photos. Anything special.” 

She flies them down to Central Park twenty minutes later. Skylar is clutching an ugly monogrammed suitcase stuffed with everything the kids deemed important.

They leave the rest to burn.


	10. Chapter 10

The fire burns for three days. 

On the first day, the fire department - what’s left of it - organises demolition teams from construction workers and army engineers and a few people they probably wouldn’t normally trust with plastic explosives. It doesn’t matter, when New York is burning. 

On the second day, they stop trying to cage the fire to the east and instead dynamite north along 84th and south along 79th. Jessica snatches a few hours of sleep and the thunder of collapsing buildings echoes through her dreams. 

On the third day, the east edge of the fire burns out at the river.. 

On the third day, Claire stabs a man who tries to steal her painkiller supply.

On the third day, it rains.

Jessica is flying when the skies open on her. She’s soaked to the skin immediately, her hair slicking to her skull and over her face. The deluge is incredible. She can barely breathe, much less see; if she keeps flying in this she’s going to smack into a skyscraper, bug-on-windscreen style. She goes straight down instead, descending until she can see the ground just a few feet beneath her boots, and drops.

Gravity reclaims her with its usual force. She grunts, bending to take the impact, and then scurries under a bodega canopy. 

She waits ten minutes for the rain to let up, then realises it’s not going to. It’s the kind of weather there would have been warnings about, before. There might be meteorologists with satellite access somewhere, but apparently not in New York.

Well. The streets are clear. She’s already wet. A little water - a lot of water - won’t hurt her.

She shoves her hair back, under her scarf, so it won’t get in her face, and starts walking.

After a couple of blocks, she realises she’s humming. 

It’s “Singing in the Rain”.

She was confident her brain wasn’t going to get any more fucked up, but it turns out there’s always a new low.

She splashes up the steps to the Met, which has become the gathering point for the fire refugees. There are two armed guards at the door, but the woman - Officer Something, a colleague of Misty’s - nods her through. Jessica is getting a lot more respect from cops than she ever did as a PI.

“There’s coffee in the staff kitchen,” Officer Something says.

Jessica gets halfway through her second cup before the shouting starts. By the time she gets to the makeshift infirmary on the ground floor, Matt has a bleeding man pinned against the wall, and Claire is standing there with a scalpel dripping blood and her lips drawn back over her teeth.

“What the fuck,” Jessica says.

“She _stabbed me_ ,” the man says, all horrified indignation. He is wearing an honest-to-god suit. Who wears a suit in the apocalypse? Matt adjusts his grip, and he yelps. “She’s dangerous!”

Some guys just don’t know when to shut up.

“Claire,” Jessica says, and holds her hand out. After a second, Claire puts the scalpel in it. 

“I’ll stitch him up,” Claire says. She is literally swaying on her feet. 

“I’ll do that,” says another one of the medics. Lorenzo Something. “Claire, go to sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“You haven’t slept since the fire started. You look like a first-year ER resident on night shift.”

This is apparently a grave insult, because Claire actually manages to blink through the dazed look and make frowning eye contact. “Hey!”

“Sleep,” Lorenzo says, and waits until Claire shuffles away. “Sit him down, Murdock. Now, sir, since you appear to be evincing symptoms of opiate addiction, I’m afraid I won’t be able to prescribe any painkillers-”

“Fuck you!” the guy shouts. “I was in pain! She knew I was in pain, and she wouldn’t give me the pills, that bitch!”

Matt does something to his shoulder that makes the guy’s skin go stark grey-white. He squeaks, a high, whistling note, and then whimpers while Lorenzo starts cleaning out the wound.

Fun as this is, Jessica figures someone should make sure Claire gets to bed. She finds her curled up on one of the stone benches in Greek and Roman Art. Her face is as smooth and peaceful as a child’s, but her neck is at a weird angle.

“Hello,” someone says, and Jessica looks up to see Skylar. She’s carrying a big pitcher of water and a serious expression.

“Hey,” Jessica says. “Where’s Hunter?”

Skylar sighs, sounding about fifty. “He’s playing with some other boys in Arms and Armour. But I have a job to do. I ask people if they want water. Do you want water?”

“No,” Jessica says. “Do you know where I could find a pillow?”

“No.” Skylar considers. “I know where there’s a cushion.”

“That’ll do.”

By “cushion”, Skylar means “a mid-17th century white satin cushion embroidered with silk and gold”. Jessica tucks it under Claire’s head and covers her with a green fluffy thing from the coat check room.

She doesn’t have super senses, but she’s all too aware that she recognises the measured pace approaching them.

“Hi, Skylar,” Matt says.

“Hello, Matthew. Do you want some water?”

“No, thanks.” He glances in Jessica’s direction. “Rain’s letting up a bit.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know about you, but I could use a change of clothes. Want to head back to the apartment?”

Since Jessica is currently somewhere between “soggy” and “drowned rat”, and she stinks of smoke and sweat, she can’t really argue with that. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”

“See you later,” Skylar says.

Matt smiles. “Say hi to Hunter for us.”

They walk back to the main entrance, their footsteps echoing. A lot of the art has been taken down and stored, but there’s still plenty on the walls. Matt seems content to just walk. Jessica wills herself not to fidget.

“Can you… I don’t know, sense any of this?”

“Sure.” He point unerringly to a statue of some Roman emperor. “I like that. The size, the shape, the way it takes up space. It sounds interesting. Human, but not human.”

There are more people coming in and out of the rooms, people eddying around Luke and Misty and their teams, people talking to Mrs Berkowitz from the Central Park Volunteers.

The fire brought people together. For three days, they had a common enemy to unite against. Maybe they can stay united.

Maybe she should stay the fuck out of their way.

“What is it?” Matt asks. Alerted by who knows - a caught breath, a rising pulse, a change in her step.

So Jessica tells the truth: “I was thinking that I’m not really a people person.”

“Me either. So let’s go home. I want to get you out of those wet clothes.”

He says it so straight-faced that Jessica wastes a half-second wondering if he meant the innuendo, or if she’s just horny and making it up. Then his mouth quirks.

“Shit,” she says. “Race you there.”


	11. Chapter 11

It’s not a fair race when one of you can fly, but Jessica doesn’t have a lot of interest in playing fair. Especially since, on the way over, she saw half a dozen people taking advantage of the rain to have outdoor showers, an idea that could be even better than Matt’s suggestion.

Well. Maybe not.

She grabs Malcolm’s soap because it’s nicer than hers, some kind of citrus-apple thing, and two of his towels (also nicer than hers) and heads for the roof, leaving the towels in the stairwell. She gets naked. Her clothes go in the bucket up there, with the laundry powder. Her jacket might be a lost cause, but she hangs it in the stairwell.

Cold water, and the pressure isn’t great, and it’s probably acid rain or infused with pigeon shit, and none of that matters, because after the second round of soap she feels cleaner than she has in weeks. She forgot shampoo, so she rubs the soap through her hair too, fingers scratching over her scalp. Black strands tighten around her fingers. She’s never going to get the tangles out, but she doesn’t care, oh god, it’s worth it. She’s clean.

“You cheated,” Matt says, from the stairwell door.

Jess flips her hair back and rinses behind her knees. “Harsh words from the 2018 dirty tricks champ.”

His face is intent, that focused look of absolute attention. It’s for her, this time, and that makes things curl and tighten inside her. “Do you have any idea,” he says, “what you look like to me right now?”

She has some idea, yeah. That’s why she’s standing in the rain, letting it patter off her skin. “Why don’t you come and show me, hero?”

He moves directly towards her. He’s still favouring that hip, she notices, but then he gets his mouth on her neck and his hands sweep down her back.

“Anyone could see you up here,” he says, and bites her neck where it joins the shoulder.

Exhibition fantasies don’t really work for her, but he’s grinding against her hip, hard through his jeans, so she doesn’t remind him that there aren’t a whole lot of people around to see much of anything.

“They could see everything,” she says, and gets her hands on his belt. “They could watch you touching me. Kissing me.”

The man can take a cue. He kisses her, and she gasps into his mouth, her fingers busy on the belt. “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes,” she mutters, and he laughs. He kicks his shoes off, so eager he staggers a little, but she catches him and crouches, peeling wet jeans off wet skin.

“Where’d you go, Jones?” he asks, laughter and anticipation mingled in his voice.

“I’m exploring my options,” she says, and slides her hand around his cock. He thrusts into her grip without hesitation. Too much friction. “Hold on,” she says, and reaches for the soap.

“You don’t have to-” he says, and then groans, hips jerking forward as she gets the rhythm right. He’s so slick like this, so hot in her hand. When she looks up, he’s got his head thrown back, rain dripping into his face.

“Anyone could see,” she says. “You’re just out in the open. I’m naked -” he gasps “- touching you on the roof.” His speed increases. She holds her hand still and lets him set the rhythm. “Anyone could see you loving this.” Maybe he’s gonna get off like this. That’s okay; it can be her turn later.

But he groans. Then he tears himself out of her grip and pulls her up, hands urgent on her arms. “Christ. Jessica, I swear to God-”

“Fuck me,” she whispers in his ear. “Fuck me in front of God and everyone.”

He’s still a moment longer, and then he spins her. They stumble towards the stairwell, and he presses her against the wall, her hands braced against rough brick, her legs spread. He bites the back of her neck.

She says, “Matt, don’t fucking _tease_ -” 

He slides into her, slow and strong, and her breath goes. “You’re wet,” he says in her ear.

“It’s raining, Murdock,” she says, but the sarcasm is maybe undercut by the panting. She is wet, slick and hot, and he moves without hesitation or clumsiness, thrusting into her with unerring accuracy.

She takes one hand off the wall, but he gets there before her.

“Allow me,” he murmurs in her ear, suddenly so polite and urbane, and starts stroking her clit with a merciless disregard for things like her ability to think or breathe. 

“Come on,” he whispers, and god, it’s his _timing_. He knows exactly when to move and when to be still, pulsing inside her. She shudders and falls apart, gripping the wall so hard her fingers crumple the brick, and then he really lets go, grabbing her hips with both hands and pounding in hard, punishing strokes.

He gasps, comes, and leans on her back, bracing her between his arms. It’s a hug, honestly, but she’ll allow it. She’s too dazed to protest.

After a second he shifts the sodden mass of her hair out of the way and kisses the back of her neck. “You okay?”

“Well, shucks, Murdock, don’t you know I’m a delicate flower?”

He laughs quietly and pulls out, standing back a little. “You smell good.”

“Aw. That’s a nice way to say that normally I smell like shit.”

“You don’t. Normally.” His face goes very still for a moment, before settling into controlled neutrality.

“Yeah,” Jess says. “Normal. You want the soap?”

“Please.”

She finds where she dropped it and brings it over, feeling weird as he strips off his shirt and starts soaping up. It’s the first chance she’s had to see him naked. No lie, all that sleek muscle is nice, but the scars aren’t nearly as pretty. The worst one runs down the right side of his spine, curving to sit over his hip. 

“Does that hurt?”

“What?”

“The hip.”

“Oh. Well, yes. I was told I’d need more surgery but-” he shrugs. Water ripples off his bare shoulders. “It’s okay. I can still work. Mostly.”

Jessica grimaces and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry about the people on the roof. The ones who died.”

He goes very still. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She doesn’t think she’s imagining the emphasis on _your_. “Well, it definitely wasn’t yours, Murdock. You were unconscious.”

“Exactly,” he says, and rubs soap into his hair.

“Oh, come on!” It strikes her how stupid this is - she’s standing on a roof arguing with a naked man she’s just fucked over who is more responsible for deaths in a natural disaster while he showers in dirty rain. “Look, I’m going to get dry and warm and into bed. Come and join me. Or not. Whatever.”

He tilts his head at her, a non-committal _I will take your offer into consideration_.

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but her bed is warm and she’s been working hard. She wakes up briefly when Matt slides in beside her, and again in the middle of the night when her dreams tear jagged holes in her rest and she fights to the surface, struggling for air.

“You’re okay,” Matt says, and she drops into calmer depths.


	12. Chapter 12

Jessica wakes up. There is an arm over her waist, and someone breathing warm and steady against her neck.

She lies very still and breathes.

These sheets are worn; not crisp, high-thread count hotel linens. They smell of her sweat, and her shampoo, and faintly of whiskey. She cracks an eyelid and looks through her lashes. The light coming through the window is smeared, glittering off the dust particles floating in the air. He’d never allow a room to get dusty.

The room is her room, the bed is her bed, the man behind her is not-

“Jessica,” Matt says. His voice is husky with sleep, but there’s a hint of something wary in his tone. He’s careful not to move. “Your heart is racing.”

It’s not racing. It’s fighting, slamming against her ribs as if it could beat its way free.

“I’m okay,” Jessica says. 

He knows that she’s lying. He can’t not know.

“Okay,” he says.

“I’m getting up,” Jessica says, slipping out from beneath his arm. He sits up as she stands, finds her back-up pair of jeans, and shrugs into a long-sleeved shirt. His hair is sleep-mussed. It’s fucking adorable.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he says.

She laughs. It sounds like broken machinery. “You want to tell me why you followed me to Hogarth’s place?”

“Oh. That.”

“48 fucking floors, Murdock. I dunno, you’re the lawyer. Does that count as stalking?”

“You’d have to establish repetition and malice,” he says.

She rolls her eyes. “Well?”

“Luke told me Claire told him you left the hospital very quickly after an incident-”

“Oh, great.”

“-and I thought you might be planning to leave the city. I was going to ask you to stay.”

“Why?”

“The city needs you.” He’s so clear about it. Like it matters. Like she matters, and that’s obvious.

“Okay,” Jessica mutters and turns back to the closet. There isn’t much in there she could wear to replace her jacket. She reaches for the top shelf, and her fingers nudge the box.

She knows what’s in there. She pulls it down anyway.

“So that’s it?” Matt says. “Conversation over?”

“Shut up, Murdock,” she says, without any heat, and lays the box on the bed. It’s covered in dust, so she lifts the lid carefully.

The sweater is purple and cream, worked in a Fair Isle pattern. It’s cashmere - soft and warm, and far too fancy for anything Jessica would buy herself. Trish had tried to tell her she deserved nice things. Jessica had tried to explain that Kilgrave had thought that as well.

But Kilgrave is dead. And Trish. Trish is dead too.

She lifts out the sweater. 

“My sister got me this,” she says, and pulls it over her head. It hugs her body, instantly warming against her skin. “I fought with her before she died. We weren’t speaking.”

“A big fight?”

“You could say that. She killed my mom.”

Matt jerks. “Jessica-”

“Maybe my mom would have died anyway when the thing happened. Maybe she wouldn’t. But Trish did die, and I-” Her lungs won’t work properly. She spins around, as if putting her back to him is going to stop Matt from knowing that she’s crying. “Did they know, your friends? Did they know you were alive?”

“No,” Matt says. His voice is unsteady. “I didn’t tell them. I thought I was protecting them.”

“Well,” Jessica says. “Aren’t we just the best.”

Her skin prickles with the need to escape, to take off into the sky the rain washed clean. She won’t leave the city; that’s clear now. But she doesn’t have to stay here, in this cracked pretense of the life she’d put together for herself, piece by ragged piece.

She sits cross-legged on the end of the bed. Matt shifts further up, tucking his feet in.

“You know the worst part of what he did to me?” she says. “It was- well, yeah, the worst was that he used me to kill someone.” She won’t tell him who. That isn’t hers to tell. “Second worst was the rape.”

Matt flinches, and she feels a spark of impatience. “Don’t get hung up on that, Murdock. You don’t get to.”

Matt smiles, a little wry. “No, ma’am.”

“But the third worst thing was the certainty. He told me what to do and what to think and how to feel, and I did and thought and felt it, like it was real. Like it was coming from inside my own head.” She rolls her shoulders. “Part of me knew, always. Down deep. But on the surface, it was so _relaxing_. Afterwards, for months, I would wake up and be scared or uncertain and all of it right at the top of my head. Every time, just for a second, I would think, it wasn’t like this with him.” 

Matt’s hand slides across the covers, palm up. After a moment, she takes it. His fingers are calloused, catching on her skin. “My mom left,” he says. “My dad was murdered. Before that, this-” he waves at his face. “I had a guy turn up - the worst guy, at the worst moment. He wanted to give me certainty, too. A mission he trained me for. He got inside my head. If he could have done it Kilgrave’s way, he probably would have.”

Jessica remembers Stick. The way he kept grabbing Matt for private little chats. He’d been so definite that Rand had to die.

And then Matt’s ex had killed him, right in front of them. For a moment, Matt’s despairing howl echoes in her ears again.

“Stick was trying to save people,” she says, because she’s sure, at least, of that. “Kilgrave was an entitled asshole.”

“Yes,” Matt says. “But methods matter.” He runs his thumb lightly over her wrist. “Since we're telling each other things, I would have asked you to stay for the city. But even if the city would be fine without you, I’d want you to stay.”

Jessica controls her automatic flinch. He lets her go anyway, lips curving in that ironic smile.

Jessica could leave. Or throw him out. Or lean forward and kiss him. The possibilities spin through her head, like her brain is playing Russian Roulette with her future.

In the end, she doesn’t get to choose.

“Hey!” someone shouts from the street. “Jones! Murdock! Message from Luke Cage.”

When she pokes her head out the window, it’s a scrawny boy with his hair in braids and a missing front tooth. He’s probably sixteen or seventeen - not enough muscle for the road crews, but just right to run messages.

Luke’s never sent a runner for her before. He waits for her to show up. Jessica feels her skin tighten along her spine. When she glances over her shoulder, Matt is already out of bed and dressing.

“What is it?” she calls.

The kid beams up at her, all teeth and shining eyes. “You gotta come, quick! Captain America is here!”


	13. Chapter 13

It looks like Luke sent out every runner he could muster, to every leader in the city. Mrs Huang from Chinatown is there, and Mrs Berkowitz from Central Park. There’s Nikita the firefighter, and the guy who’s been running the search crews - at least forty people Jessica’s seen around, and about eighty that she’s never encountered. 

Malcolm’s standing awkwardly at the back of the crowded library. He smiles at her and Matt as they enter, and then his gaze flickers over to the issues desk, and the door behind it with the “Staff Only” sign.

Luke and Claire are nowhere in sight, and there’s no tall American hero. Jessica makes a deduction worthy of Sherlock fucking Holmes and barrels towards the door. Matt is right in step behind her.

“Six people,” he says quietly. “Wait. Seven- No. Six again.”

That’s enough warning for Jessica to know this is going to get weird. Matt’s step hitches as they get closer. “Jessica, wait-”

“Have you met me?” she grinds out through her clenched jaw, and slams the door open.

Danny Rand hops off the desk he’s sitting on cross-legged. “Jess! Matt!”

She falters, long enough to take in Colleen, smiling behind him, standing beside Misty, and Luke and Claire in conversation with Captain America. He’s big, and serious, and kind of offensively handsome. The beard is a nice touch.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she says, somewhere between Danny and Colleen, and pivots on her heel. “And where the fuck were you?”

“It’s okay, Jess! Cap has a plan.”

“It’s a fair question, Danny,” Captain America says. He looks more exhausted than any super-soldier should. “The answer is complicated, ma’am.”

Claire sucks air through her teeth. 

“Dumb it down for me,” Jessica suggests.

He looks around the room. “Well… New York was doing fine.”

Jessica punches him in the guts. 

Captain America folds around the blow. Luke catches her arm before she can get in a second shot, and Misty grabs her other wrist. Between them, they wrestle her back. Danny is yelling something; Colleen looks faintly alarmed.

Claire is smiling. 

“Nice,” Matt says in her ear. “But I think you only get one.”

Jessica nods and shoots Luke a look. He lets her go, looking faintly exasperated. Captain America straightens up. She’s quite certain he let her hit him. From his face, though, she hit a lot harder than he was expecting.

“- _worse_ than New York!” Danny is yelling. “Texas is basically on fire.”

“So was the city,” Matt says crisply. “We’re willing to accept things are worse in other centres, Captain Rogers, but any suggestion that we’ve had an easy ride won’t be accepted by any of the people outside.”

“Or in this room,” Claire murmurs. Danny looks betrayed.

“I apologise,” Rogers says immediately. “What I meant was that you guys were doing much better than anyone could have hoped, in terrible circumstances. The Avengers are based in Wakanda at the moment, and we’ve been doing what we can, where we’re most needed. That wasn't here.”

His eyes scan the room. For a specimen of physical perfection, he looks pretty sick. “It isn’t enough,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Jessica has the horrible suspicion that Captain America is really as genuine and noble as Vido thinks he is.

Whatever. She’s not going to feel sorry about that punch.

“But we can fix it,” Danny says earnestly. God, she’d forgotten he was so _young_. “Cap has a plan, and we need-”

There’s a boom and a rush and a giant man in a red and black suit is suddenly filling the corner of the room. His head and shoulders are crammed under the ceiling at an uncomfortable angle.

“Seven,” Matt says. “Huh.”

Jessica’s ebbing adrenaline surges back.

“Welcome back, Mr Lang,” Rogers says. “Hope you can stay a little longer.” Is that sarcasm? From Captain America?

The guy pushes his helmet-mask thing back. “I’m trying,” he says. “My entire body is kind of infused with quantum particles, so stability is an issue.”

“You were telling us how you planned to use the Quantum Realm at the resting place of the Soul Stone to disrupt the effects of the Reality and Time Stones,” Claire says.

It is without a doubt the weirdest thing Jessica has ever heard her say.

Lang launches back into what is evidently a speech he’s delivered a lot. It involves a lot of bizarre names - what the hell is a Gamora? - and high-speed physics and math, and Jessica grasps about one word in ten. “In short-” Lang says, and vanishes again.

“In short, we need your help to save the universe,” Rogers says. “Or make it so it never had to be saved. We need to go back to a specific place, which will allow us - well, Mr Lang and Shuri and Tony and Bruce - to enter the timestream and prevent this from ever happening.” He waves around the room. “All of this.”

“What do you need us for?” Jessica demands. “Seems like you’ve got a bunch of geniuses on tap, and you don’t need a college dropout and a lawyer to manipulate the fundamental forces of the universe.”

Okay, so maybe she’d followed a little more of the speech than she’d thought.

Lang pops up again. He’s normal-sized this time. “Mother _fucker_ ,” he says wearily.

“Hey,” Rogers says.

“Cap, you were a soldier in World War II. You really going to tell me you never dropped a single f-bomb?”

“It’s a terrible thing to say about anyone’s mother,” Rogers says, straight-faced.

Lang mutters something under his breath that makes Matt cough, and turns to Jessica. “The problem is that Thanos has plenty of troops, and thanks to the Mind Stone, he’s got some idea of what we might be up to, so the planet’s heavily guarded.”

“We’ve been collecting talented individuals who might make a difference in the fight,” Cap says.

“Ah,” Luke says. “You want us to kick the crap out of aliens.”

Lang points at him. “Yes! Yes, exactly that.”

“I’m in.”

“I knew you would be,” Danny says, beaming.

“We found Mr Rand and Ms Wing in Johannesburg. He was sure you’d all want to assist,” Rogers says. His eyes slide over Jessica, but his assessment isn’t anything to do with her looks. “We’d be grateful for the help, but you have to know that it’s dangerous. If you die, and we succeed, it won’t matter, because you’ll be back before Thanos completed the Gauntlet. But if you die, and we fail…”

He lets it hang there.

Jessica opens her mouth.

Matt speaks before she can. “When you say we’ll be back before this all happened, does that include our memories?” 

Lang nods. “Yes. Absolutely. All of the trauma - physical, mental - it’ll all be gone. We won’t remember any of this, because it won’t have been.” He shudders. Jessica doesn’t know who he’s lost, or what he’s seen, but from the shadow in his eyes, she suspects she doesn’t want to find out.

“All our memories of the last few months,” Matt says, and Jessica gets it then.

They’ve done a lot. All the people in this room, the people in this building, the people in this city - they fought and built and made things happen. It was horrible, but they did it. They survived this far, through working hard and thinking clearly and fucking kindness and compassion.

Claire is looking wistfully at Luke. Colleen is staring at her hands.

She can feel Matt behind her, solid and warm.

That - all that’s going to vanish too.

But there isn’t any choice. There’s no choice at all.

“Yes,” Jessica says. Her voice is steady. She keeps her eyes trained on Captain America. “I’ll go. I’ll fight.”

“Me too,” Matt says.

“I’d go, but I don’t think you planned to ask me,” Misty says, dry as bone.

Luke blinks at her. “Misty, if we don’t make it, Harlem’s going to need-”

“Yeah, I know.” Misty waves her hand at him and smiles at Colleen and Claire. “Sisters doing it for themselves. We got this.”

“Oh, I’m going,” Colleen says. “Can’t let the white girls have all the fun.”

“That’s what Shuri told Carol!” Lang says, as if they know either of these people, and then there’s a pop of displaced air, and a much smaller Lang is peering up at them from the worn carpet. “I really hate this,” he sighs to no one in particular, and slouches over to lean on a table leg. 

Luke and Claire and Misty go out to talk to the heroes of New York. Captain America trails behind them, his face settling into bland, picture-perfect lines.

Matt takes Jessica’s hand. She lets him.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jessica says. “Let’s do that.”


	14. Chapter 14

She lets Matt take the lead, and he takes her through the warren of corridors to a storage room. It probably held books at one point; now the shelves are full of display materials and library resources. There’s an honest-to-god collection of VHS tapes.

As soon as they’re inside, Matt swings her around and kisses her.

She kisses him back, with everything she’s got, and they’re both breathing heavily when he pulls back and rests his forehead against hers.

“I don’t want to forget,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jessica says. “Well, you’re gonna. Because if we don’t forget, it means we lost.”

He laughs, a puff of warm air against her cheek. “You’re a pure beam of sunshine, Jones.”

“That’s what they tell me.” She wraps her arms around him, her palms flat on the broad planes of his back. “I’m going to think you’re dead, Matt. You get that? Luke and Danny and your friends, we’re all going to think you’re dead, because you’re a secretive asshole who always thinks he knows best.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Matt says, and kisses her eyelids, one after the other.

“Is now a bad time to say that I kind of have a boyfriend?” Jessica wonders.

“Oh, I knew that,” Matt says. “Claire told me. I figured all bets are off in the apocalypse.”

“Yeah,” Jessica says. “Well. He’s got a kid, Vido. He loooves Captain America. Didn’t believe any of that war criminal bullshit.”

“Smart kid,” Matt says. “I hope it works out for you, Jessica. I hope you talk to your sister.”

“Me too.” Even if she doesn’t, even if she can’t pull her own head out of her ass, Trish will be alive. That’s worth everything. She’d throw a thousand Matt Murdocks away for that.

Still.

She kisses him again. His hands move to her butt and pull her hard up against him.

“We don’t have much time,” she says, but she’s already working on his belt.

“Then we’d better work fast, hero,” he says.

“I’m not-”

“Yes, you are,” he says firmly, and lifts her off her feet. She lets out a little surprised noise - _not_ a squeal - as he lifts her onto a rickety table. It rocks under their weight.

“I’d have liked to do this in a bed,” he says, and kisses along her collarbone. His stubble scrapes against her skin. She doesn’t exactly hate it.

“Wow, Murdock, a bed? Getting fancy.” 

He laughs, the low rumble resonating through the places where he’s pressed against her. He starts to slide down her body, but she tugs him back up. “Not much time,” she reminds him.

“There’s always time for-”

“Murdock, if you don’t get inside me right now, I’m going to walk out that door.”

There’s an infinitesimal pause, and then he’s tugging her jeans down. “Copy that, Jones,” he says, voice rough, and presses into her.

He’s careful. She’s wet and ready, but still kind of tight. She hisses when he gets all the way in and he stops immediately. “Okay?”

She loops an arm around his neck and tugs him into a kiss for an answer.

They’re quick, because they have to be, but everything seems to have slowed down around them, dust drifting lazily under the harsh flourescent lights. 

“Matt,” she says, pressing her fingers along his cheekbones.

“Jessica,” he says, and brushes her hair back.

When it’s over, she has her ankles locked across his hips. From the way he’s leaning all his weight into her, hot and welcome, he’s not any more eager to leave than she is to let him go.

Still.

They move at the same time, some signal shifting between their bodies that tells them now is the moment to break away and refasten pants and brush hair back into place. Jessica doubts they’ll be fooling anybody. 

They don’t touch again, but they walk side by side down the narrow corridor and out into the main room, where the meeting is wrapping up with hugs and advice and Mrs Berkowitz calling Luke “that nice young man”.

“Where’s your spaceship?” Jessica asks Rogers.

“With Captain Marvel, in Wakanda,” he says. “Quinjet’s on that roof over there.”

“Okay,” Jessica says, and takes off. Below, she hears a quiet intake of breath, and grins to herself. It’s not every day you get to surprise Captain America.

She stands on the roof and looks over the city. New York on a late fall morning, her many windows glinting under the pale blue sky. She can smell the smoke from the fires and the incinerators that are dealing with the garbage piles.

Matt climbs up before the others can get there. “Hey,” he says. “How’s she looking?”

“Beautiful,” Jess says. 

“Yeah,” Matt says. “Well, you never know. Maybe fighting aliens will be fun.”

 

It isn’t.

 

Jessica wakes up. Her phone says it’s just before noon, which is far too early, but she rolls out of bed and pulls on her clothes. She was getting somewhere with the Cunningham corporate espionage case, which will come with the nice bonus of pissing off Malcolm, and also with a nice actual bonus if she figures it out before the end of the week.

She’s starving, and the bodega on the corner does a great egg-and-cheese. She drops by Oscar’s apartment on the way down.

“I’m heading to the-” she says, and then, “What is it?”

“Have you seen the news?” he asks.

She shrugs, and he grins at her, shaking his head, before he steps out of the way. The TV is showing scattered footage from an attack in New York. Iron Man’s there, and that Spider-Man kid.

“-connected to this later attack in Wakanda-” says the news anchor, a little breathless. “This leaked footage shows a horde of apparently alien invaders being repulsed by the Wakandan armed forces, with the aid of the Avengers.”

“Leaked, my ass,” Jessica mutters, looking at the footage with a practiced eye. Wakanda doesn’t leak footage. Wakanda carefully offloads selected segments of high quality film that shows their country in the best possible light with the same meticulous care they used in the past to make their country look like a rural subsistence economy. She watches a big guy cut an alien in half and turn without hesitation to smash another in the face, while a woman behind him levels some kind of sonic weapon and takes out three of the invaders in one shot. 

To be fair, Wakanda’s best possible light is pretty fucking good.

There’s a lightning flash in the sky, and Thor sweeps past, an ax clenched in his fists.

“That’s new,” Oscar notes.

“Can’t slice and dice with a hammer, I guess. So it’s all over?”

“Yeah. That android thing, the Vision, did something with the Scarlet Witch, and it killed the big purple guy. Thanos.” There’s a thread of excitement in his voice. Under all the pretended maturity and practiced cynicism, Oscar can be just as big a superhero nerd as his son. 

“So the Avengers save the world again.” She does tiny jazzhands. “Hooray.”

“Half the universe,” he says solemnly. “Captain America did an interview about twenty minutes ago. Thanos was going to wipe out half the life in the universe.”

Jessica snorts. “What an asshole.”

The news anchor is promising a panel discussion in the next segment, and then a detailed examination of Captain America’s military record. America’s 24 hour news cycle rolls on. “I’m getting an egg-and-cheese from Carla’s,” she says. “You want anything?”

“Same for me.” Oscar kisses her. “You getting sweet on me, Jones?”

“Don’t be a dick,” she says, and kisses him back.

Hell’s Kitchen bustles around her as she walks the block, car toots and shouted phone conversations providing the soundtrack of the city. She can’t help doing the math.

Half the universe. _Asshole_.

She fumbles out her phone before she can think about it too hard and types the number from memory.

Three rings. Four. Shit, Trish is probably on-air, she won’t be looking at her-

“Jess?” Trish’s voice says. “Oh god, Jess, please don’t hang up.”

Jess’s thumb is hovering over the End Call button, and she almost pushes it out of sheer irritation that Trish knows her so well. “Listen,” she says brusquely. “I’m not ready to talk yet.”

“Okay.”

“But I will be. Someday. Okay?”

“Yes,” Trish says. “I get it. Someday is good.”

“Good. Bye.” Jess hangs up and takes a deep breath. Then she goes into the bodega and buys two egg-and-cheese sandwiches.

Life in the city rolls on.

Luke texts her sometimes. She meets Claire for a drink, and is surprised when she has a good time. Danny comes back from a business trip with Colleen and tries to buy her bulletproof glass windows, but settles for tossing a job or two her way from Rand Corp. 

She has a twenty-minute coffee break with Trish where they don’t talk about anything but work and the weather.

Luke calls her one late fall morning. A call from Luke means an emergency, and she’s not surprised to hear strain in his voice when she answers. “What’s up?” she asks, already calculating which cases she can shove to later in the week.

“You’d better speak to him yourself,” he says, and there’s the muffled sound of a phone changing hands.

But Matthew Murdock’s voice is clear. “Hello, Jessica,” he says.

Several possible responses flash through her brain. _What the fuck?_ and _How the hell did you survive?_ and _You asshole, what took you so long to tell us?_

She clutches the phone against her ear, and chooses none of them. 

She says, “Hi, Matt."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this story, and especially thanks to all those who left comments and kudos! I have a full time job and a packed schedule, and it's often hard to find time for fic. Your patience and encouragement made a real difference.


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